UK Brokers: Claim Your Free 30 Minute Telephone Consultation With Lee At The End Of This Article…
I heard recently that one of the direct-to-market lenders predicts a fall in broker numbers from 30,000 today to 10,000 by the end of 2010…
I think that’s a biased view, but it certainly makes you wonder how many mortgage brokers will leave the industry as a result of the credit crunch.
But more importantly, what are you doing to make sure that you’re not one of the casualties?
As a business coach for several mortgage brokers, I hear the same issues all the time. Not everybody has every issue, but everybody seems to have at least a couple of things in common with the headings below.
As you read them, think about your business and which affects you the most…
"The business is taking over my life. I work long days and it’s wearing me down"
You probably started your business to give you more independence, but now it is consuming you. It is surprisingly easy to get out of this fix and it’s the first thing we will address. It is not unusual for clients to tell me they are saving 1-2 hours a day within a week of working with me. You will be much more relaxed and happy, quicker than you can imagine.
"My staff are hopeless without me. I can’t take a holiday because everything stops"
In the realms of science fiction, you would transfer your own brain pattern to your staff so that they can think and do what you do. We achieve this in the real world by turning your ways of thinking and working into business processes.
A married couple were working 100 hours a week in their business and wanted to cut their hours. All they could do when they weren’t working was sleep! We fixed it quickly, getting their hours down to a far more reasonable 48 a week within 3 months. By fixing the root cause, their stress levels dropped through the floor too.
"I don’t get enough new business. I need to get more enquiries coming in"
To achieve real growth, you need to develop your knowledge and processes for marketing so that you know for every £1 you spend on marketing you will get a return. This means stopping the things that aren’t working and improving the ones that are.
This is easier than it sounds. You can even build processes for your marketing to reliably generate referrals from your existing clients.
"We get plenty of enquiries but we are losing out to lenders and other brokers too often"
If you rely on the "natural" sales skills of your team and have not thought about teaching them some specific skills that will improve their sales, you are probably missing the single easiest way to improve your performance. The way that most people sell is to talk about products and solutions until the customers places the order. You can learn the secret to this with just a day’s training.
Having taught this to many clients, it is not surprising to see sales improvements of twice or even three times current performance levels when you "get it".
"We are making great sales but there is no profit, I just don’t understand why we are not making more money"
There is no such thing as natural ability to make profit. There is a skill to running a business with effective financial controls that you have to learn. Understanding your accounts is the first step to making more profit. Your management accounts, when you understand them, become one of the most powerful tools you have in business.
"I have lost my spark. I used to get excited by my business, but not any more"
It may be that things haven’t gone to plan and you’ve had the "stuffing" knocked out of you a bit. Or it may be that you have just gradually lost your sense of purpose with the business. Whichever of these it is, until you "find your mojo" you will struggle to perform anywhere near your best.
"OK Lee, I recognise my situation in one or two things here, what do I do next?"
It starts with a completely free, no obligation chat on the phone. What happens after that is entirely up to you.
During our call I will ask you some questions to help me identify your key business challenges and to understand your goals. I will give you some ideas of what you need to do to fix things.
Finally I will explain your next steps if you think that I can help you to develop a better mortgage brokerage.
You might decide to spend an hour or two on the phone with me to help you get to grips with your lead generation. Or you might choose to invest in a day’s sales training. Alternatively, if you’ve got a bigger business you might be interested in a business development coaching programme. The choice is yours.
You can claim 30 minutes FREE phone coaching with Lee Duncan by filling out this form:
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